The Browns have shown some positive signs over the last three weeks, but still haven't taken advantage of the NFL's commitment to parity.John Kuntz, The Plain Dealer

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The sports world wakes up every day, congratulating itself on a level playing field, which -- except on the sandlots, where dreams begin -- is a fallacy. A well-maintained field in organized sports has a rise, a "crown," so the water can drain off the slope.

Dealing with a slanted field is part of life. Even before high school, for example, the coach's son is usually the favorite son.

Resolutely, though, we look to Milan, Ind., the real "Hoosiers," to believe all baskets are 10-feet high and all dreams accessible.

We recall "The Miracle of Coogan's Bluff" of a mere 61 years ago, featuring a flashing dugout light, transmitting signs stolen from the center-field clubhouse of the never-say-die New York Giants.

We know that the Super Bowl didn't really begin until 1969, when Joe Namath trotted off the Orange Bowl field, one finger held aloft, with the New York Jets and the upstart AFL victorious.

In the pros today, there are few examples of parity, however.

The only league that makes any pretense of fairness is the NFL, although the Browns have proven sadly immune. Elsewhere, teams go up and down, like riders on a sprawling roller coaster. Arizona, of all nobodies, nearly won a Super Bowl, then reverted to nobodyhood. Tampa Bay actually won a Super Bowl. The Bengals and Lions reached the playoffs while the Bears, oh, my, reached a Super Bowl without shuffling.

In the NBA, only nine teams have won league championships since the 1979-80 season. Dallas and Philadelphia won only once each. It will get only worse in this era of team-stacking, either by collusion or by players showing up at the center jump circle with stamps all but plastered to their foreheads, so determined are they to "mail it in" until traded to the coastal city of their choice.

The Lakers have won it all 10 times in the 1980-2012 time frame. This, however, is the third year since their last one, so, slow start and all, they are due. That's the truth, even if, as Lakers fan Jack Nicholson once said, "You can't handle the truth."

Major league baseball is a money orgy, the likes of which has not been seen since, oh, the presidential election. For a time, smarts put Tampa Bay in a World Series and made the Oakland A's, where "Moneyball" was born, the most celebrated non-big game winners since the Bad News Bears. Once the analytics genie was out of the bottle, though, the Yankees swooped in and laid Brinks trucks on all the mavens of Wins Above Replacement and similar WAR-time metrics.

But what of the Old College Try? It happens every spring with March Madness. We celebrate the bracket-buster and sing the praises of the early-round Davids that avoid being tossed casually into the quarry by Goliath.

We dote on Gonzaga (yet to make a Final Four) and Davidson (ditto). But Ohio State, a football school ever since Woody Hayes tore up his first ballcap in rage -- and actually well before that -- has been to two Final Fours in five years.

Every fan can live with his office-pool entry in flames if the fire-starter is George Mason, Virginia Commonwealth or Butler. But when Gordon Hayward's halfcourt heave at the buzzer hit the backboard and rattled out, who won? Not Butler, but Duke, bluest of the bluebloods. In recent years, Duke, Kansas, UConn and Kentucky have won national championships. The favorite this year, despite Saturday's upset loss to Butler, is Indiana. The absence of a flung chair does not make the real Hoosiers the real "Hoosiers."

College football was a cabal run by the BCS for years, with teams from all but the select six conferences pressing their noses against the glass, like Ralphie eyeing the Red Ryder BB gun in "A Christmas Story." There have been occasional schools like TCU, which moved up, like a lower-division team on the make in English soccer, to a premier conference, and Boise State, which in one game has shown it can beat anyone.

But more often, success has been transitory for the little guys. Kent State fielded its best team in four decades -- and promptly lost its coach to Purdue. Its conqueror, Northern Illinois, finally realized the Mid-American Conference's goal of a BCS bowl payday, then its coach bolted to North Carolina State.

The BCS favored no one more than Ohio State. The Buckeyes, however, seemed to have come a cropper when scandal and suspensions led to the forced resignation of coach Jim Tressel, a losing season last year and a bowl ban this year. But an unlikely set of circumstances caused uber coach Urban Meyer to fall into OSU's lap, a flawed team went 12-0 this year, and it seems as if Ohio State had never been away.

Elsewhere, Alabama seeks its third national championship in four years. The Crimson Tide is a 9 1/2-point favorite over a plucky overachiever that began the season unranked -- Notre Dame.

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